Thessaloniki Tentatively Acknowledges Its Jewish Past, While Greek Anti-Semitism Persists

While Thessaloniki (formerly Salonica) was under Nazi occupation, the local Greek authorities hired 500 workers to dismantle the old Jewish cemetery in order to build over it. Aristotle University—Greece’s largest—now sits atop the graves, whose 350,000 tombstones were put to use in a variety of projects. Only in 2014 was a monument erected to publicize this gruesome fact, inscribed with the somewhat misleading statement that the cemetery was destroyed by “Nazi occupation forces and their collaborators.” Although the memorial is one of a few tentative signs of changing attitudes toward Jews in Greece, writes Devin Naar, anti-Semitism remains a strong force on both the left and the right: